Charlie made a different kind of mistake, too!
“We’re people, we’re not monsters. We’ve just made a different type of mistake than someone else.”
— 34-year-old John Collins, who announced his support for a provision being pushed forward by the Seattle Office For Human Rights, which believes that convicted criminals should be made a protected class.
Collins sure made a different kind of mistake, all right. He served four years in prison for drugging and raping his estranged wife.
I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I am: “He’s done his time, and that’s no reason not to hire him to coach that junior high girl’s soccer team or to refuse to rent him that apartment in your home where your former Miss Florida wife and three gorgeous teenage daughters live.” Am I right?
Just joshing. What I’m really thinking is, “I wonder if this is a set-up by someone who wants to make the whole idea of protected classes look ridiculous?”
Protected classes are the groups whose members can’t be legally discriminated against because of their physical qualities and characteristics. The recognized protected classes are…
- Race – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866
- Color – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Religion – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
- National origin – Federal: Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Age (40 and over) – Federal: Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
- Gender – Federal: Equal Pay Act of 1963 & Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Familial status (Housing, cannot discriminate for having children, exception for senior housing)
- Sexual orientation (though not in all jurisdictions )
- Gender identity (in some jurisdictions and not in others)
- Disability status – Federal: Vocational Rehabilitation and Other Rehabilitation Services of 1973 & Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
- Veteran status – Federal Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974
- Genetic information – Federal: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
Of the eleven protected classes, nine of them are conditions that an individual has no control over. That signals the essence of “invidious” discrimination, the inherently unfair and destructive refusal to treat a human being equally because of bigotry, intolerance and hate, dooming, if sanctioned by the government, those individuals to permanent second class citizenship. Government is doing its duty by forbidding such discrimination (no matter what Rand Paul says) because allowing it undermines the core principles of the nation as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
The other two classes, veteran status and family status, arise from valid national interest and public policy considerations. The nation has a valid interest in encouraging service in the military and the formation of stable families. Allowing veterans and families with children to be discriminated against in housing and employment is contrary to those interests.
Does the country have an interest in promoting criminal activity? I sure hope not (though in the case of illegal immigration, the government is acting as if it does—but I digress). In fact, it has just the opposite: we have a legitimate interest in discouraging criminal conduct.
Is status as a convicted thief, rapist, drug dealer, swindler or killer something an individual is born with, or has no control over? No. citizens have complete control over it, in fact: if they don’t want that status, all they have to do is not break the law.
Thus being a convicted criminal has neither of the essential characteristics that justify being designated as a protected class. The fact that the Seattle Office of Human Rights would even think such a thing is appropriate proves that it staff doesn’t understand its job and it mission.
Yes, as poor John the Rapist suggests, criminals are people too—people law-abiding citizens have every reason to be wary of, and to have the right to reject as a tenant or a neighbor because they don’t seem trustworthy. State punishment doesn’t wipe the slate clean; a convicted criminal has no right to insist that he or she be treated like everyone else. If given a choice between two potential employees, one who has managed to live his life without raping someone, and the other who just couldn’t help himself, I’m going to choose the non-rapist every time, and it is a completely fair and reasonable decision. I am not without compassion for the plight of ex-convicts, but their problems in life are the direct and predictable results of their own conduct.
Convicted criminals are not victims; they created victims. Government should not be forcing businesses and landlords to deal with them, or giving them any special assistance at all. They rejected the law at least once when it suited their mood or desires; they have no argument for special protection by the law from their own self-marred reputation. Rape isn’t, after all, a “mistake.” It is a manifestation of an individual’s lack of self-control, character, ethics and respect for society’s standards of conduct.
We have, therefore, good reason not to trust John Collins and other former criminals, and the government is abusing its power as well as common sense if it forces us to do otherwise.
Ethics Alarms 
John Collins at least is talking about himself. It is within the realm of plausibility that he is genuinely remorseful for his past acts and frustrated by his inability to re-enter society. The folks at the Seattle Office for Human Rights, the ones who are actually advancing this bill, are the ones who deserve our contempt. Luckily, Collins’s current landlord seems a reasonable sort of person: I have cautious optimism that his arguments will prevail.
I agree with this, Rick—although the use of “mistake” to describe serious, complex and premeditated crimes and misconduct is the worst kind of euphemism.
Granted.
“Genetic information?” When did that pass? Was that before they made Gattaca?
The 1972 Montana Constitution allows convicted felons to vote, once they are released from all state oversight (imprisonment, probation, parole, etc.). Far as I know, that’s the only civil right that is restored. I don’t think it would apply to those required to register as sex offenders, or those required to wear an alcohol-detecting ankle bracelet, etc., as that is state oversight.
The mind boggles. I think Seattle and the State of Washington are on drugs (perhaps why they want to “protect” convicted felons).
In the case of John the Rapist, we’re not talking misdemeanors, or even drunk driving, we’re talking about premeditated brutality. He’s remorseful? He should be, but tough luck. I have no assurance that he won’t do it again (and again, and again). Any law that puts him into a “protective class” would have ramifications I hate to imagine. Pass that law and he might just end up protected — that is, in protective custody.
And why is it that a person can go on the web and find out what paroled sex offenders live in their neighborhood? So we can welcome them with open arms and then HIRE them? Nope. It’s to protect our families. Almost all psychologists and law enforcement personnel agree that once a sexual offender always a sexual offender. This may do some an injustice, but as a rule, we want to stay away from these people, not embrace them, and certainly not be forced to see them as a “protected class.”
His remorse can be dealt with by his priest, his minister, his shrink. It’s not my job, and never will be.
Using the unconstitutional sex offender registries as an example of proper behavior is not a strong point. It shows persecution for the point of persecution. Attempting to make convicted criminals a protected class only makes sense if people are overreaching in reacting to them. Your post (unintentionally) makes the case that that is occurring.
I’m not supportive of this measure, but your blindness shows why it exists.
Jeez, I’m agreeing with you all over the place today.
The treatment of sex offenders troubles me greatly. It undoubtedly penalizes, indeed persecutes, those who were ill or unlucky and have been treated successfully, in order to protect society from a smaller number of incurable predators. The handling of it seems to ne to be the reverse of core American values, in which we would rather see the guilty go free than punish the innocent. Children are the gateway to a lot of ethical outrages.
Exactly. Think of the children! Don’t worry about the guy peeing behind a bush on the long stretch of empty highway in Montana. Wait, I mean worry about him shackin’ up in yer good ol town and raping yer wom’n and yer childr’n.
I vehemently disagreed with you about Natalie Portman, so the universe is not completely upside down.
The term “mistake” has, these days, evolved into a PR term which says, in essence, “Sure, I’m a criminal and a louse of the first order, but you should forget all such allusions to my character because I’m moving on [another PR catch term!] to another phase of my life where the pastures are greener and my opportunities for more unrepentant infamies will expand accordingly.” This sort of statement- so familiar from Hollywood, the legislatures and the union halls- is moving into other realms.
The biggest criminals (after serving their usual abbreviated sentences) are naturally attracted to the major leftist polities for succorance. And for good reason, too, as this is where even bigger criminals tend to rule the roost. Birds of a feather… and all that. All you have to do is redefine your depravity of purpose as a descrimination or “civil rights” issue. That’ll rally the leftwing core voters and their elected officials behind you, to the advantage of them all. And that, after all, is the ONLY consideration for them.
BTW: I counted five categories of (not two) of which the individual has choice over. Of course, I find it both dismaying and disgusting to find one of them (being a veteran) thrown in with with others such as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. Besides, no veteran worth his salt would want to live anyplace where service to one’s country was equated with perversion.
I believe criminals who have served their time are entitled to the equal protection under law. The denial of opportunities in housing, employment, the franchise, etc., breaches that protection and is, simply put, discrimination. Consequently, the idea of obtaining protected class status is an approach, I believe, that has a lot of merit.
Criminals most often do not operate in a vacuum. We’d like to believe that perpetrating a crime is solely the fault of the perpetrator. Often, individuals and society as a whole have created situations and circumstances under which criminal activity can flourish. It is too easy to blame the criminal and not regard social conditions as laying the groundwork for miscreant and felonious behaviors. We need to take as much responsibility for the environment in which people live as the person who commits a crime within unhealthy environments.
No, we don’t. I take no responsibility whatsoever for what a criminal does, and I ask him to take no responsibility for what I do. The fact that situations allow criminal behavior to “flourish” doesn’t excuse the criminal one bit. A person who shows himself to be capable of breaking a law serious enough to go to jail has to prove to me that he’s trustworthy, because there are plenty of qualified people who haven’t been sent to jail. the fact that someone has ‘done his time” doesn’t change the fact that he had to do time, and it is reasonable for that to be a handicap for the rest of his life. Unfair, you say? I don’t think so, but it is entirely within an individual’s power to avoid the dilemma. Obey the law. You talk as if that’s an unreasonable expectation.